The Man In The Basement
by Mistyresa
Summary: Well, this is my first fan fic EVER. I was so intrigued by the writing here that I had to give it a try myself... well I hope you enjoy! VinxTif
1. The Dare

Carefully stepping one foot in front of the other, she cautiously looked back at a group of three young boys all fidgeting nervously.

"Wait! Maybe this isn't such a good idea! I take the dare back," said an obviously overly distressed voice for such a young boy.

Her cautious look turned into a thin-lipped scowl, and she turned back to the heavy laden door and with all her might pulled it back while slowly slipping inside the dark mansion.

The nervous fidgeting abruptly turned into a stiff bodied look of bewilderment on the three boys. Not knowing what else to do they broke out into a sprint back towards town.

The door slammed behind the little girl with a loud thud. 'No going back now….' Her little arms crept up around her small frame as she tried to warm herself from the very cold draft running through the old Shinra mansion. The floor boards seemed to creak louder and louder with ever step she took. After a couple of feet she stopped and took in her surroundings. The mansion was dark, not just because it was near dusk, but because the walls were a very dull and dark brown. Dust seemed to linger in the air perpetually, not only throughout the empty space in the mansion, but all over the possessions that lined the floor as well. That's when she noticed it: A small piece of yellow paper.

The child sat cross-legged on the ground and began the long and arduous task of deciphering the complicated message. Being only seven years old, she had just recently learned to read. Some of the words forced a crease of her brow as she attempted to figure them out. After she was done, the frown stayed on her forehead. 'Why would someone lock a man in the basement?' Looking at the clues that the sheet had to offer over and over again, the girl had no idea how to even begin.

At that same moment she heard a loud, high-pitched scream.

Her head whipped to the side to find a man seemingly attached to the ceiling by a long chain. The sight of a man suddenly so close to her was not the only thing that startled her…but the large guiotenesque blade that was attached to the end. With a frightened whimper, she sprang to her feet while simultaneously dropping the yellow slip of paper and let her miniature legs carry her at a fast pace out the door that she had not long ago walked so defiantly through.


	2. Alternative

**Some of you may not enjoy the way I'm going to portray Tifa's dad in this story but you'll see where I'm going with it! I promise! Anyways my sister didn't get to edit this fully so it may have some errors but I wanted to get it up. Anyways the monster in the last chapter was just one from the game that I remembered battling… **

**Disclaimer: I don't own FF7 or any of the characters. Same goes for the first chapter.**

It was getting harder and harder for her to laugh with her friends everyday. The death of her mother had taken a toll on her fragile and developing mind. But Tifa was a strong individual even at 8 years old. She forced herself to keep going, and prided herself on the fact that she was always told she was mature for her age by adults. I mean she was the first and the only kid to volunteer for the dare into the forbidden Shinra mansion right?

Tifa stopped at this. Her mind wandering back to the day in the Shinra mansion, the little slip of paper and the man in the basement. Her mind was racing with possibilities, but by no form, shape or way was she ever going to step foot back into that first floor of the mansion again. ...Tifa... Her oddly burgundy hughed eyes took on a new luster as she began to devise a plan in her young mind. Her hand idly wandered up to the nape of her neck as she curled her fingers around the back of it. ...Tifa... Now how was she going to get to that man? He needed help that was for sure, and though she didn't realize it she had forgotten about her dead mother for the moment. TIFA!

"WHAT!" She exclaimed finally snapping her mind free of the prison she had held it in just moments ago.

"Jeez Tif, way to go space pirate on us. Come on we wanna go play hide n' seek!" Jimmy pleaded.

"Gah, boys are SOO immature sorry but I got something more fun I wanna do... WITHOUT YOU GUYS." With a hmph and a quick pivot she was off, but to where the boys had no idea.

She walked slow, too slow for a vibrant seven year old girl. Creeping actually, she was sneaking around town. Carefully peeping into a window she caught sight of exactly what she hadn't wanted to see. Her father drunk again. He was yelling at the television with a bottle of vodka flailing about droplets of the potent alcohol as he haphazardly let his arms go wild as if they had a life of their own. Ducking down quickly she set about her usual course of action. Well this wasn't exactly the "fun" she had in mind when she had excused herself from hide n' seek. If she was old enough to curse the situation silently she surely would have, but not before devising a plan into her room without her father noticing her.

She surveyed the outside of the front of her house before realizing there was no way in besides the front door. Looking to her right she noticed something that in any other situation she would have had no need to know this valuable information. The roof of her next-door neighbor. It was low to the ground...quite low to the ground indeed.

Though young, Tifa had a natural dexterity she was graced with since birth. She had learned to crawl just a few short months after her mother had given birth to her, and learned to walk not too long after that. Her mother always used to tell her that she was the smartest and strongest little girl she had ever met. That made Tifa proud in ways she could not describe, she might not have even known it to make her feel proud until she grew up. She chastised herself as she diverted back to the way her mother had affected her life, and brought her attention back to the unusually sunken ground that the neighbor's house sat upon.

Fighting the urge to cry, she began her assent to the roof of the neighbor's house. Once on she grabbed onto a drain pipe and shimmied up until she was at her own window. She was small enough to sit her rear-end upon the window sill and work at prying her window open. Slowly, but surely the window came open high enough for her small body to climb through. Once inside she changed into a much more comfortable outfit than her regular green mini-dress and green high-heels. A pair of denim shorts and white t-shirt with tennis shoes did just fine for her task ahead.

She walked quietly back to the window as to not alert her father to her homecoming. The thought of him asking her how she managed to get past him without his noticing was not the threatening question on her mind. Not even were words on her mind as she thought of her angry father in all his stupor and drunkenness descending on a strong yet small and defenseless Tifa Lockheart.

Once at the window she looked out for a moment, she could see the well and though she could not see the Shinra Mansion it was on her mind. How was she going to free the poor man in the basement? Her eyes drifted to the places where she had put her feet to climb up to the point where she was, and...

WAIT. That was it! There must be an alternate route into the basement! There was no way she was going to figure out those clues, and there was no way that she was going back into that front door after what happened with that horrible monster-man attached to the chain from the ceiling.

She had a mission, and Tifa was not one to deny herself of her own curiosity.

Little heals clicking against the cobblestone of the pathway leading up to the Shinra Mansion. Long brown hair blowing in the chilly wind that always seemed to cascade down from the mountains. Goose bumps appearing on thin but strong arms. Tifa Lockheart began her search for her way into the man that needed someone… anyone to help him. She just couldn't understand how anyone could be in a basement as scary as the Shinra mansion's for an elongated period of time.

Her search began the same way it had with her own house; in the front of the building. Her meticulous search proved fruitless, but she never gave up. Around toward the back of the building she went. Every brick, every stone, every everything, but nothing. Obviously frustrated, the little girl kick the ground with her small green shoe. Kicked the ground… no… not the ground… wood? She carefully knelt down and brushed away some more of the loose dirt. Wood. Not ground. A trap door? So many thoughts were rushing through her mind as she found the handle and pulled it open abruptly. The door instantly swung open, and as the ferocity of the doors pushed back, so did she. Falling backwards, but catching her foot within the opening she began slipping. Slipping into a dark abyss that she had no idea where it led to.


	3. Red, Black and Gold

'I'm going to die. I can't see. I can't feel.'

It was quite a sight to see; a young Tifa Lockheart flailing about all the while screaming her lungs out as she fell no more than ten feet. It was not something she often did, that is, lose her composure. But pondering the situation at a later date it still seemed justified. And understandably so; for she was falling into a deep, dark hole that led into the cellar of a very terrifying Shinra mansion that was supposed to hold an unknown man.

An unknown man that had been locked up for god knows how long…

But it didn't even hurt when she hit the ground. She was so numb with fear that she didn't know that she had stopped falling. So the screaming continued along with gasps of fear.

Eventually running out of air realization set in. She was sitting on a dusty floor; tears streaming down her cheeks and eyes that were gradually adjusting to the dark cellar. She rubbed her eyes with clenched fists, but only succeeded in getting more dirt in them.

Still unable to see correctly, she stood up. Slowly fumbling around for something, anything fear started to set in. Every second that passed her paranoia became more intense until she was shaking uncontrollably. Finally SOMETHING. A box. A…long and hard box surprisingly smooth. But finding the box was anything but graceful for her steel-toed boot rammed the base rather forcefully. She stumbled just enough to make her hands steady themselves on the top of this box.

Her weight was pressed down by her hands, and before she new it, the lid had flown off the top of the box and was discarded on the other side of the room.

The little girl flew back, but only about 2 feet for her hair was stuck on a loose bolt coming out from the side of the box. As she struggled she felt an incredible gust of wind blow the hair off of her face.

Her peripheral vision caught sight of red, black and a shiny gold flipping through the air high above her head. Instinct told her to duck and cover so even though it ripped some of her hair out, she shot down, held her knees, and buried her face in them.

Throbbing pain erupted as the hair was forcefully pulled from her scalp, but the strong sense of fear dwarfed any other feeling she had at that moment.

'GREAT JOB Tifa, you wanted an adventure, you wanted to find the man in the basement, you wanted to help him, YOU WANTED TO GET YOURSELF KILLED!!!!!

What have I done! I'm going to die down here and no one is going to find out ever. I'm just going to be the dumb little girl that disappeared and was never seen again. This is all Jimmy's fault!! He's always so boring and the other boys too! They push me to go on my own and find fun things to do. If they wouldn't have been so emotionally void, I wouldn't have had to go out and had some fun myself!'

Unbeknownst to Tifa, she was being watched, very intently in fact. She had her face buried in her arms as she muttered to herself, a very strange site indeed for someone who had just been awakened from a seventeen year hibernation. A very _unwelcome _site indeed…


End file.
